Sex offender photos cost some their jobs

Posted: Tuesday, March 16, 2004

By The Associated Press

MUNCIE, Ind. -- Robert Enochs was starting to turn his life around last fall. He had moved out of his car and in with his girlfriend, and they had gotten engaged. He soon landed a job driving a tow truck.

Then the local paper ran photographs of him and 62 other sex offenders on the front page.

The harassing phone calls began. Within a few days, Enochs lost his job. His fiancee stayed with him, but the convicted child molester otherwise found himself a pariah in his community once more.

"When I saw my picture in the paper, I was more upset and mad, more than anything else," said the 33-year-old Enochs, who served two years behind bars for molesting a relative and has been out of prison for a decade. "What happened in the past, leave in the past, don't bring it back up."

At least five of the 63 Muncie-area men and women pictured in The Star Press on Feb. 15 have lost their jobs, some of them because they hadn't revealed their past to their employers, said sheriff's Deputy Steve Case.

The Associated Press

The front page of Sunday's edition of The Star Press in Muncie, Ind., displayed photos of 63 people in the Muncie area who are listed on Indiana's sex offender registry. The newspaper's actions divided the community, judging by letters to the editor, and sparked debate in journalism circles.

What the newspaper did has divided this industrial city of 66,000 and stirred debate among journalists.

Other papers around the country have run photos of sex offenders. But The Star Press may have gone further than most, devoting half of the front page of the Sunday paper to the photos. It also listed the offenders' crimes along with their home addresses inside the paper.

The information on the 60 men and three women was drawn from Indiana's sex offender registry, established in 1994 to give people a way of learning whether neighbors, coaches and others in their midst are released rapists or child molesters. Those identified by the newspaper had been on the state registry for anywhere from a few months to nearly 10 years.

"I would like to see you publish this information at least once a month on the front page," one reader wrote. "Great job," said another.

Others were outraged. Some compared the photos to public stockades and the scarlet-letter treatment. Another warned that printing the offenders' addresses could open them to retaliation.

"You paint the least offender with the stigma of the worst. You weaken relationships, you jeopardize trust, and you can ruin people's lives," one letter-writer said.

Star Press Executive Editor Evan Miller said the newspaper realized that some of the 63 could suffer, but "we made a decision that the information was more valuable than the potential for fallout."

He said the aim was to help publicize the sex-offender registry. He said few people seemed to know of the registry, which can be seen on the Internet or at the sheriff's office.

Of those The Associated Press could reach, only Enochs would agree to be interviewed and identified by name. One, fearful he may be harmed, said he had started taking medicine for anxiety.

"Everybody that was on the paper and everything, it endangered people's lives," Enochs said.

Case said he was unaware of any offenders suffering physical retaliation. He also said he did not know of any instances in which child molesters were found to be working in jobs that put them around children.

Gary Hill, director of investigations for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis and ethics chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists, said it is not clear yet whether The Star Press did the right thing. Some sex offenders do strike again, but displacing them from stable, law-abiding lives could itself trigger more crimes, he said.

Mark Popovich, an ethics expert on the journalism faculty of Ball State University in Muncie, said he believes the paper met its civic duty.

"What we're talking about here is the rights of a few who have limited rights in these situations, versus the rights of the majority," he said.